The everyday process for taking an oath of workplace, or for swearing testimony in a authorized setting in the US, entails elevating one’s proper hand and sometimes putting the opposite hand on a spiritual textual content, mostly the Bible. This act is meant to indicate sincerity and invoke divine witness to the truthfulness of the assertion being made. Nonetheless, there have been cases the place people have deviated from this customary observe.
Departures from established oath-taking conventions can stem from quite a lot of components. Private beliefs, reminiscent of not adhering to any faith or holding particular non secular objections to oaths, could immediate a person to forgo using a spiritual textual content. Issues relating to the symbolic implications of utilizing a specific guide, or a need to venture a particular picture, might additionally contribute to the choice. Historic context reveals that whereas using a Bible has turn into broadly accepted, it isn’t legally mandated for swearing an oath in the US.